Jonas found guilty

The self-proclaimed 'Skeptics' on the Bad Science Forum are not concerned about misconceptions concerning our disease. If they were, they would have investigated the nonsense of the 'PACE Trial', and also Phil Parker's Lightning Process, and the 'SMILE Trial'. We need to stop being naive about the term 'Skepticism', and to stop confusing it with true scepticism.

The self-proclaimed 'Skeptics' on the Bad Science Forum are not concerned about misconceptions concerning our disease. If they were, they would have investigated the nonsense of the 'PACE Trial', and also Phil Parker's Lightning Process, and the 'SMILE Trial'. We need to stop being naive about the term 'Skepticism', and to stop confusing it with true scepticism.

BW
Wildcat xxxx

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For the life of me I can't understand why anyone would take the so called "Bad Science" forum seriously. They are nothing more than a wing of the Ministry of Truth, aka Science Media Center and their ilk. If anyone thinks they don't have an agenda, I have bridge to sell you, or maybe some nice "waterfront" property in Florida.

Thanks very much for posting the details of the judgement, Wildcat. Quite long to wade through, so I've pulled out some excerpts summarising the conclusions and a couple of points of interest:

Background:

It was the Health Professions Councils (HPC) case that on 15 April 2010, the Registrant began posting on the Bad Science Forum under the alias Jonas making comment in relation to Dr XY and her practise. Further it was the HPC case that these comments were disparaging of Dr XY.

Decision on Facts:

...this Panel has comprehensively considered all the oral and written evidence and has viewed a cd of the Registrants posts on the Bad Science Forum in relation to particular 1. The Panel find, independent of the Registrants admission, the facts alleged at paragraph 1 proved to the requisite standard.

Decision on Grounds

It is the Panels judgement that the Registrants conduct alleged at paragraph 1 of the allegations was inappropriate and unprofessional. In acting as he did he failed to keep high standards of personal conduct as well as professional conduct and his behaviour fell short of what would be proper in the circumstances.

Decision on Impairment:

Whilst this Panel does not question the Registrants motivation with respect to his interest in the use of internet sites such as the Bad Science Forum to discuss and debate clinical issues it nevertheless finds that his posts were disparaging, inappropriate and unprofessional.As set out above the Registrant failed to keep high standards of personal conduct and it is the Panels judgement that his behaviour had the potential to damage public confidence in him and his profession. Whilst the Panel accept that he has shown some insight and that there is a low risk of repetition, it is the Panels judgement that there is a clear need, in this case, to declare and uphold proper standards of behaviour and maintain public confidence in the profession. The Registrant admitted misconduct in making disparaging comments on the Bad Science Forum about Dr XY could undermine public confidence in him and in his profession. In the circumstances of this case the public would expect the Registrants regulator to make a finding of impairment. Public confidence in the profession and the HPCs regulatory role would be undermined if a finding of impairment of fitness to practise was not made.

The Panel finds that the Registrants fitness to practise is currently impaired by reason of misconduct.

Decision on Sanction:

...[The panel] has considered the question of which sanction to impose in ascending order of severity. It notes that where a Panel has determined that fitness to practise is impaired, it is not obliged to impose a sanction.

It first considered to take no further action, but decided against this course having regard to the seriousness of misconduct set out above. To dispose of this case by taking no further action would neither reflect the seriousness of misconduct found nor address the public interest considerations referred to above. This misconduct cannot, in the Panels judgement, be categorised as minor.

Having decided that to take no further action would not be appropriate in this case, it next considered the imposition of a Caution Order. In that regard it considered all the criteria set out in the above mentioned indicative sanctions guidance. It notes that this case does not involve any issues in relation to the Registrants clinical competence and further notes that the misconduct did not cause any patient harm.

The Registrant has apologised for his misconduct, now realises that his actions fell below the standards expected of a registered professional and has shown genuine remorse. Further, it is the Panels judgement that the majority of his posts on the Bad Science Forum were not inappropriate and that there is a low risk of reoccurrence of his misconduct.

The Panel has decided to make a Caution Order. It notes that 3 years should be regarded as the bench mark for such an Order but has decided to decrease that period to two years to reflect the mitigation present in this case, set out above

The full details of the evidence presented at this hearing are presumably not available to us, but based on all the evidence I have seen in the last year and a half of the conduct on the Bad Science forums, I must say that this decision seems to me entirely appropriate. The panel has found that referring to a fellow registered professional in the insulting language used by Jonas is behaviour worthy of sanction. The reasons for this are not dissimilar to the reasons why we don't accept such language on this forum - it is simply common courtesy and good manners, and there is no excuse for personal insults. Hurling insults around seems to me even less excusable when it is carried out in the name of rationalism and to defend 'good science' - restraint, reasoned argument and well-presented evidence are surely more appropriate.

It is disappointing, but not surprising that many Bad Science members still fail to understand this decision.The comments made by Jonas on that forum are mild in comparison to the abusive and disrespectful language that are commonplace there. There are likely several other members of that forum who are also clinical scientists or who work in other health professional roles, and if those people were not hiding behind the cloak of anonymity, their routine insults would also constitute professional misconduct which could result in sanctions. One can only hope that this case will cause such people to reconsider their behaviour on that forum. Regardless of how the anonymity was broken, it would be rash and foolish for anyone to presume that the anonymity which they have enjoyed thus far will be maintained in the future. None of us are truly anonymous on the internet, and there are many relevant areas of law where practices are still evolving. Everyone should expect that their behaviour online may be subject to scrutiny from regulatory authorities, and I feel confident that much of the bullying and abusive behaviour that has been permitted so far will not be so tolerated in the future. There may be more Bad Science members who are in for a rude awakening...

I have not seen precisely which evidence has been presented in the Jonas case, but I must mention that Bad Science members have laughed loudly at my mention here that the loss of the infamous 'uberthread' was 'convenient' for them. In a typically wild non-sequitur, they concluded that this comment made me a conspiracy theorist and they laughed at the idea that the evidence on that lost thread presented them in a bad light. It would seem appropriate for them to now reconsider whether their language and behaviour on that thread might indeed be legally actionable. I don't know whether evidence from that particular thread formed part of this case, but it might perhaps still be relevant to future legal action. Fortunately, activists familiar with the methods of their opponents preserved at least some of the evidence that Bad Science deleted.

Now that it has been clearly demonstrated that the insulting language permitted on Ben Goldacre's site can properly result in professional sanctions, now that Jonas has admitted professional misconduct in his comments on Bad Science, and now that Dr Myhill has at last been allowed to resume practicing medicine, one might perhaps expect the Bad Science mob to pause for reflection and reconsider their behaviour. But no - the GMC and the HPC got it all wrong, of course, and it is still, in their blinkered view, the patients, not themselves, who are the wild and unreasonable pack of aggressive extremists inhabiting a dangerous 'echo chamber'. It seems they are still defending the language they have used, still defending their right to hurl abuse whenever they decide it's deserved, and still bemused as to why it's not acceptable to go around insulting people.

The self-proclaimed 'Skeptics' on the Bad Science Forum are not concerned about misconceptions concerning our disease. If they were, they would have investigated the nonsense of the 'PACE Trial', and also Phil Parker's Lightning Process, and the 'SMILE Trial'. We need to stop being naive about the term 'Skepticism', and to stop confusing it with true scepticism.

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Hi Wildcat, I agree with you. I consider myself a sceptic, which means I entertain all views while looking for evidence to reject each of them. These people are often denialists posing as sceptics. If they were sceptical, they would be sceptical of their own claims too, but somehow I think most of them miss that point. Bye, Alex

The panel has found that referring to a fellow registered professional in the insulting language used by Jonas is behaviour worthy of sanction. The reasons for this are not dissimilar to the reasons why we don't accept such language on this forum - it is simply common courtesy and good manners, and there is no excuse for personal insults. Hurling insults around seems to me even less excusable when it is carried out in the name of rationalism and to defend 'good science' - restraint, reasoned argument and well-presented evidence are surely more appropriate.

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I be that plenty of insulting language has been used here in regards to Esther Crawley's dishonest claims that PACE showed a 30-40% recovery rate for CBT/GET... and quite rightly so!

I know what you mean about how insulting language can be presented as a part of rigorous intellectual debate, when really it just undermines any real chance of discussion - I expect I've behaved like that myself when I've slipped in to a bad mood. Sometimes people can enjoy being condemning of others simply in order to create a sense of their own superiority (I love doing that!) or to feel a part of some clever 'in-group' - but there is also real value in permitting people to speak abrasively about one another.

I don't know much about Dr Myhill, or what errors may have been on her website or if they were worthy of serious condemnation, and we don't know exactly what language Jonas used, but I think that professionals should be given quite a lot of leeway in their ability to condemn one another, in order to promote a culture which ensures that quackery is condemned. The British medical profession is way too concerned with maintaining respect for itself, at the cost of allowing patients to be mistreated, and I see this case as being another reflection of that culture. Just because this is one rare time when these rules have been used to the advantage of a doctor popular with PWCs doesn't mean that we should be cheering it on.

There was a special report on the way the NHS treats whistle-blowers in Private Eye a few months back, and it does seem that there's a fairly endemic disinterest in routing out bad practice. I've heard similar things from people I know who've worked in the NHS. This is a really serious problem for us, particularly as a CFS diagnosis allows clinicians to claim authority over every aspect of a patient's life - biopsychosocial - there's so much more room for quackery. Any attempt to restrain criticism of doctors is going to hurt us more than most other patient groups, and I think that we could make really rapid advances if there was a cultural and regulatory change which recognised that doctors are just as likely to be flawed as anyone else, and cannot be constantly assumed to be working reasonably in the best interests of their patients.

(I'm struggling to write clearly - sleepy-sleepy. Hopefully I got a sense of what I mean across).

I have only read a couple of posts on this thread and haven't followed the case as it developped, but i think this is a very good outcome. It's nice to see such an institution do it's work properly and rule in "our" favour. That's the way it should be, we would deserve a lot more from the institutions meant to protect and help people in our situation. Nice to see how things turned around in the end...

well yes Esther some of us do, because we were so appalled by his abuse of Dr Myhill and her patients that we kept copies to send her

the denigration of Dr Myhill continues on BS

personally I can't understand why anyone who stated that his actions were deliberately intended to 'increase the stress levels of a doctor's patients' , and that he found this 'very pleasurable indeed' should ever be allowed to work as a clinical scientist again

This quote has been removed because it contained extremely offensive and defamatory comments made by a poster on another forum.

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In all fairness to me/cfs patients on a number of threads I visit, I have never seen vitriol of this nature, not even close, even on mecfsforums. And this is not a one off. How anyone could make such a comparison is beyond me. Even if there were cases on me/cfs forums, after decades of maltreatment, I think there would be justification. Yet it does not happen or rarely happens. Says a lot about both parties.

Did Jonas actually say that his actions were deliberately intended to "increase the stress levels of a doctor's patients", and that he found this "very pleasurable indeed"? Keep in mind that many self-styled skeptics love stirring up those they believe are sympathetic to quackery.

And no one has ever written equivalent things about Simon Wessely being a "spiteful, mean minded, petty, scheming, two faced, vexatious, deluded, evil, lying uberquack"?

I doubt Wessely has had many marriage proposals from ME/CFS patients though.

Shoot, I was just trying to post it as a URL to encourage people to click on it and take a look. Not sure if just clicking anywhere will bring you to the actual Tweet and subsequent thread. If not, you can click on the time/date section where it shows when the tweet was posted, that will bring you specifically to the tweet.

Whatever your view........
Research and debate amongst peers has to start somewhere. Personally, I welcome this opportunity to raise the profile of ME/CFS sufferers and lack of funding to pursue promising areas of research and development. I hope brave doctors like Dr Myhill and others will continue to promote their ideas and protocols and invite discussion. Eventually one of the major pharmaceuticals will sit up and take notice......